Generally, the rapid developments of digital broadcasting enable a broadcast of high image and audio qualities to be viewed via satellite, terrestrial, or cable. Compared to analog broadcasting provided by the general analog television, digital broadcasting is capable of providing various additional services as well as high video and audio qualities. Moreover, owing to the expansions of the audio/video compression technique and the transmission/compression technique, digital broadcasting has broadcast channels more than that of analog broadcasting.
Meanwhile, it takes a considerable time for a user to search a number of channels for a specific one. To reduce the search time, a method of providing a preferred channel according to a related art is schematically explained with reference to FIG. 1 as follows.
First of all, a user registers to store a specific channel preferred by the user. A preferred channel list 30, which has been set by the user in a manner of manipulating a preferred channel key of a user interface unit (not shown in the drawing), is provided to a screen 20 of a TV 10, as shown in FIG. 1, while the user is watching the TV 10. So, the user is facilitated to select a preferred channel via the preferred channel list 30.
However, the related art preferred channel providing method provides the preferred channel list containing preferred channel numbers only to user. So, since the user is unable to know what kind of program is currently provided on a corresponding channel, it is troublesome for the user to switch a current channel to the corresponding channel.